Somewhat Humbled
by Mind of the Childishly Naive
Summary: A lot of things have grown fuzzy, indistinct, since his fall from Heaven just a few short weeks ago. Cas finds that he has trouble remembering things that came to him in a heartbeat, before, small things he has known for thousands of years. But he remembers Dean so clearly. / Season 9


(A/n) Because I am endlessly optimistic about Cas getting an apartment (and Dean visiting him). So there's potential divergence from Season 9. Reviews are appreciated!

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Somewhat Humbled

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Cas takes the opportunity while Dean is out of the kitchen to examine the cut that flows along the back of his right arm and hand. It's deepest three inches below his wrist, where it starts, and stretches all the way up to the carpals alongside his thumb, below his pointer finger. The cartilage has been torn; Cas' finger is trembling and twitching, and there's an unpleasant loss of sensation in his hand. He's more used to that than he is the pain, but knows the faint, numb tingling under his skin is not a good sign.

It's disconcerting. And increasingly painful.

He closes his left hand over the wound again, a fresh gush of blood coming between his fingers as he applies pressure to keep it closed. His right hand curls into a fist against the burn of pain, or tries to – Cas feels the muscles in his forearm flex, then pinch painfully, the sharp burst of heat that goes through his wrist and makes his hand shake. Cas doesn't realize he's made a sound until he hears Dean's worried, too loud, _"Hey,"_ as he comes jogging back through the doorway, a towel in hand.

Dean hooks the toe of his boot around the leg of the nearest chair and drags it around the corner of the table, so it's in front of where Cas is sitting in another. He sinks down into it, unfolding the towel between his hands. Their legs bump and tangle together and Cas straightens up, looking down, trying to move his knees out of Dean's way. One of them only brushes against the inside of Dean's thigh, and Cas quickly pulls it back, his foot sliding on the cool tiles. He realizes his leg is trapped between both of Dean's and is at a complete loss for what to do with it, but Dean doesn't seem to notice the problem.

"Hey," he says again, much quieter than before, and his hands come up under Cas' arm with the towel over them. The tone surprises Cas enough to distract him and he looks up at Dean's face, but Dean's eyes are on the wound under his hand. "Quit squeezin' your fist like that, Cas, you're just makin' it bleed more." He half-laughs, green eyes darting up, though Dean doesn't lift his head. "You kinda need all that now."

Cas nods mutely, lowering his gaze.

He forces himself to relax his hand, taking a deep breath through his nose and then letting it out slowly. He moves his left hand off the wound when Dean's hands move to replace it, using the towel to sop up the blood that's run clean down his elbow, staining the leg of his jeans and the cuff of his short sleeve. Cas grips the excess bit of towel that's hanging down in his left hand, so he doesn't drip blood all over the floor. Dean peels the towel away after a few seconds to get a better look at the cut, and Cas watches the lines form between his eyebrows, head tipped slightly forward.

Dean grimaces as he folds the towel back down.

"You might need stitches, man," he says, and shakes his head, "How the hell you do somethin' like this, reachin' under a damn sink?"

"There's a pipe that's leaking," Cas says, as if Dean wasn't here to witness the slew of dirty dish water across the kitchen floor, after Cas had finished washing up and pulled the plug out of the bottom of the sink, "I think it's fair to assume that's where the water has been coming from."

It's been something of an enigma up until now. He'd noticed water in the floor, pooling under his feet and soaking into his socks, when he ran water in the sink. For days, in fact. Cas had simply assumed it was himself, clumsy and newly human – that he had splashed it out over the edge of the sink filling up a pot, or glass, or coffee cup; it never occurred to him that there was something wrong with the plumbing.

"Pipe didn't do this, Cas," Dean says, apparently amused, his lips pulling up at the corners as he glances at Cas, "You had to've hit a nail or a screw sticking outta the bottom of the counter or somethin'."

Cas turns his head, looking toward the kitchen sink, where the door underneath it is still wide open. There are more towels bunched around the bottom of the counter, where he and Dean did their best to get the water up when they noticed it spreading. Cas can see the white plastic pipe hanging loose, unattached to anything it's supposed to be, a ring of ugly, brown rust staining the once-pristine coils at the open end.

He feels a bit like the pipe, and lowers his head again.

"I didn't see a nail," Cas says quietly, looking down at the towel around his arm as he rubs it between his red-stained fingers.

His wrist is pinned between both of Dean's hands, the bottom holding his arm steady and the top applying pressure, and it occurs to Cas, suddenly, that the warmth he feels radiating up through the soft, thick fabric is from _Dean_. His throat feels tight. Cas swallows hard and ignores it, blinks away the prickling that starts in his eyes, and focuses on the dull throbbing in his arm, wrist, and hand, instead. Dean's grip is firm, steady, having done this countless time before for himself and Sam; but Cas' own hand is caught in an almost-constant tremble and he can't seem to sit still.

He wants to shift and fidget, anything to relieve the restless itch he feels clawing at his arm, but he doesn't want to disturb Dean, so he suppresses the urge.

The nerves are aggravated, he suspects, his face tightening in a wince at a particular twinge of pain that makes his hand seize. Dean's palm squeezes down a bit harder until it stops, and Cas lets out a breath through his nose. He distracts himself by looking at Dean's hand, the veins dark blue under his skin, his prominent knuckles and the smattering of freckles and thin scars. He remembers the work he put into that hand, the heat of his Grace as he wound each muscle and tendon back into one sinuous whole.

Dean's voice is a soft rumble between them.

"Yeah, those suckers are bad about hangin' out where you can't see 'em. I can take a look under there if you want." He laughs. "I mean, I'm not a plumber or anything, but if somethin's just come loose I can probably fix it."

Cas feels that odd tingling in his sinuses, the heat in his eyes, but he doesn't realize what it means until his vision blurs unexpectedly, and he watches a tear drop onto the back of Dean's hand. Cas blinks rapidly, his brow knotting, but instead of going away, he feels more tears welling up and sliding down his cheeks. His mouth trembles, but Cas is more perplexed, annoyed, with his body's reaction than he is upset.

He sees Dean's head snap up, the movement swimming in his peripherals, and Cas looks up, as well, at the soft, "Hey," that Dean breaths out. It's so surprised and concerned, it would have been unlike Dean just a few short years ago. When Cas lifts his chin he feels the air cooling his neck, where the tears have collected, and it doesn't even occur to him to wipe them away. Dean's eyes are worried, his expression so open and earnest – Cas has a hard time holding his gaze and drops it quickly, swallowing hard.

"My – arm hurts," he says, somewhat lamely, around the roughness in his throat.

It's dishonest of him. This pain is no different from any other that he's experienced since Metatron stole his Grace, and he is slowly learning to tolerate the small throbs and aches that plague his body, now that it's truly his. It's the feelings that are not inherently physical that he is having such a difficult time adjusting to, the way they sweep in out of the clear blue and overwhelm him. It's the strange sensation building in his chest, that he doesn't quite have a word for yet.

Loss, Cas thinks, is close.

Something akin to nostalgia.

But it isn't a reason he feels particularly inclined to share with Dean – despite Dean's offers to talk, his growing willingness to listen.

Of course, Dean is much better at lying, does so as a profession, habitually. Cas doesn't, and he sees at once that Dean does not believe him; feels it in the way Dean's hands both squeeze his arm again, though not as tightly as before.

"Can't hurt that bad," Dean says, a surprisingly tactile way of calling bullshit, and busies himself with adjusting the towel. It's grown sticky with the blood slowly soaking through, and Dean peels it back, folds it so there's a clean section laying over the wound, and bears down again. Cas sees, briefly, that the underside of his fingers are red. "You got awful quiet real quick, man, is this about that stupid sink?"

The inquiry seems completely random to Castiel and he frowns, looking toward the sink again, the towels strewn along the baseboard. But he's struck with a sudden clarity, as he does so. A soft laugh works its way out of his throat, surprising him – and Dean – and Cas keeps his head down as his eyes wander aimlessly over his hand, fisted in his lap, Dean's hands wrapped around the bloody towel and his arm.

"I suppose it just seems as if everything I touch winds up broken," Cas says, feeling resigned, "As if… I break everything."

He hears the chair creek under Dean's weight when Dean shifts, closer to the edge of the seat, straightening up, his shoulders squared and his chin raised. Cas watches Dean's toes push against the floor and his knees move, bumping into Cas' legs. He doesn't try to move out of the way this time; doesn't try to pull his arm back or clench his fist when Dean's fingers dig into the towel, into his arm, and it almost hurts.

"You didn't break the sink, Cas."

"I know that." He does, and shrugs his shoulders. "But there is some outstanding irony in that it's my sink that's broken. I suppose my sink was always broken."

Naomi said something very similar to him, didn't she? A crack in his chassis. He doesn't even die right – a fact reiterated, yet again, despite that he is human, now. It's something that suddenly terrifies him. Another overwhelming feeling that crashes over him with the force of a wave breaking on the beach.

And then there is Dean.

"Your sink's not broken, Cas," Dean says, with such angry conviction that Cas looks up at him. The second he does, though, Dean seems to slip a little, his eyes leaving Cas' and moving aimlessly, his brow knotting up. His voice drops to a near mumble, and Dean directs it at their knees, "'S just – different. Alright?"

Cas hesitates, a slow smile forming as the waves go out.

"I'm pretty sure it's broken, Dean."

Dean shakes his head, his jaw set. Cas recognizes that it's pointless to argue with him, as Dean nods his head toward the kitchen sink.

"_That one's_ broken," he says, "And I'll fix it, if I have to spend three hours on the internet figurin' out how, so – shut up."

The towel gets peeled back again, without any sort of warning. Cas winces, doing his utmost to hold his hand steady instead of flexing it. The pain has decreased to a dull throb at the edge of his attention, though he's certain if he moves it will renew. He lets Dean lift his arm, the towel heavy where it's draped over his leg; Dean turns his arm so he can see it better, gently presses his thumb along the side of the cut, where the blood has finally started to clot. His skin is red and tender, and Cas sucks in a short breath when Dean presses too hard.

"Y'got a first-aid kit anywhere?" Dean asks, and Cas shakes his head.

Dean leaves him alone in the kitchen to get the kit out of the trunk of the impala, where it's parked on the street below. Cas looks at the wound again, while Dean is gone, lifting it closer to his face. He holds his wrist steady when he moves his fingers, tentative and slow, just to be sure that all five of them work properly. There's a painful tug deep in his hand when he tries to curl his pointer finger down, but the damage doesn't appear to be as extensive as he originally suspected.

Dean says much the same, when he comes back and sets the already-open box, a bottle of whiskey, on the kitchen table.

"No stitches," he says, and Cas is distantly relieved.

Dean sits on the edge of the chair, situating his knees on either side of Cas' right leg, where his arm is resting on the towel.

Cas is distracted by the amber bottle, the liquid sloshing until it stills, while Dean lifts his arm again, bunching the towel underneath it. Dean picks the bottle up, unscrews the lid with his thumb and removes it with his teeth, then upends the bottle and pours it liberally over the cut along the back of Cas wrist. His grip is surprisingly tight when Cas starts, his mouth opening as a noise slips out, and tries to wrench his hand away at the sharp sting that sets his arm on fire.

"Sorry," Dean says, around the lid that's still between his teeth.

Cas catches his breath, stops trying to pull away, but his arm is clenching painfully. Dean sets the bottle back on the table, balances the lid on top of it without bothering to screw it back on, and takes the gauze out of the box. The towel catches most of the mess, as the liquor beads down Cas' arm in dark, clear rivulets. Cas watches as Dean pats his arm dry, presses down over the cut again, twice, and then starts wrapping it.

It's a while before he says, "You're very good at this, Dean," and the words come without Cas having any real intent to say them.

Dean half-laughs again.

"Yeah, well – "

"I mean," Cas says, "You're very good at – fixing things."

There's an odd surge of pride in his chest. He remembers the first time he felt Dean's soul in Hell, all of the worst of him bubbling on the surface, a churning sea of anger and pain and beneath it all the empty places Alistair had torn out of him. The Righteous Man, cutting up the souls of the wicked and desperate. Castiel had expected ugliness, red bleeding into the darkest black, rage and fear at the sight of an angel – but instead he had found a soul so unfathomably _sad_, guilt swimming in the gaping holes.

The anger had been there, certainly, but not where Cas had expected it – all of it directed inward instead of at the souls on the rack. He remembers snatching Dean away from all the ash and blood, the swelling sea of darkness in his heart; gripping him too tight, laying his Grace over Dean's soul and filling up all the places where Dean's joy, his hope and forgiveness, should have been. He remembers his own warmth spreading out over the small, reluctant soul shuddering in his grasp.

He remembers putting every piece back, and where they no longer fit he made room. The places that were rough, he smoothed away.

A lot of things have grown fuzzy, indistinct, since his fall from Heaven just a few short weeks ago. Cas finds that he has trouble remembering things that came to him in a heartbeat, before, small things he has known for thousands of years. But he remembers Dean so clearly. The way his soul felt, once it was whole and well again, a pulse of fresh warmth in his hands, thrumming through his Grace.

Castiel can still feel it, even now.

The goodness and love in Dean's soul, slowly spreading outward.

It fills up all the slots that Dean himself has whittled out over the years, with his doubts and frustrations, his appalling sense of failure. Purgatory alone changed Dean in ways Castiel is just beginning to see. He is finally coming to terms with what he did in Hell; he is finally starting to like himself, at least a little. That makes his soul burn all the brighter, and Cas is glad that he does not need his Grace to feel it.

He can feel it in the firm tug of the gauze as Dean wraps it around his wrist, works it between his thumb and forefinger, so he will still have plenty of mobility. The way Dean's fingers press into his skin when he squeezes gently, keeping his arm still, or the way the rough pads of Dean's fingers brush against the palm of his hand, over his fingers. Cas can see it in Dean's eyes when he glances up, perplexed by the earlier statement, but half-smiling, soft and quiet, a light of something so apparent and close to affection that it resonates with what Cas can only assume is his own soul, now that he's human, without his Grace.

"Nah, I just - had a lot of practice, I guess," Dean says, and Cas can hear that growing warmth in his voice, though it's pitched low and somewhat humbled. "...Shut up."

Cas doesn't say anything else, just watches Dean's face, memorizing each freckle and laugh-line as if he's never quite got to look at them properly – until Dean noticed and shifts, frowning and uncomfortable, and grumbles for him to stop. Then Cas looks at his hands, instead. He doesn't stop himself from reaching out and taking Dean's hand, once he's tied off the bandage. He runs his thumb over Dean's knuckles, squeezes his hand and touches his palm, the inside of his wrist with trembling, uncooperative fingers.

Maybe the one good thing he's done, out of all the years he has existed – the one thing he is truly proud of – is raising Dean Winchester from Hell. Saving this one, important, wonderful soul from an eternity of rage and self-worthlessness, of bitterness and despair, watching over the man he has become.

Maybe that's good enough, and the rest simply doesn't matter.

Maybe Cas can be at peace with that.

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-Motcn


End file.
